According to Next Energy News,
In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.
If true this could potentially increase America's oil reserves tenfold, possibly cutting the cost of oil in half. It would be interesting to see what would become of the Middle East with a greatly reduced US presence. Since America's involvement in the area is blamed for every problem that exists there by Islamic extremists and America haters everywhere one can only eagerly await the paradise that will bloom once we're gone.
Amazing, world shattering stories appear with a fair degree of regularity in the news which later turn out to be less than advertised. This one would have so many positive benefits for the US that it is hard not to get excited. To put it mildly, it bears watching. More to come...
2 comments:
I don't know if it's true or not, but some economics fella once told me the United States has enough oil to sustain itself...if we wanted.
He explained the government decided it was better to purchase oil and deplete the resource of other countries first before tapping our own source...
In other words, it was better to spend what was expendable and save what was thought to be finite.
I can certainly see the logic in that but I wonder if now wouldn't be a good time to start tapping what we have, especially if it turns out to be as large a supply as this story indicates.
I think the future of energy lies in sources other than oil and while we find and perfect those other things it would be nice if our economy wasn't so tied to as unreliable a part of the world as the Middle East.
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